Nicholas Stuart is a columnist with the Canberra Times.
Nick Stuart has written three books,
Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorised Political Biography;
What Goes Up: Behind the 2007 Election; and
Rudd's Way: November 2007 - June 2010.

Monday, August 12, 2013

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

The first debate of the election campaign . . . hopefully the last.

I'm all in favour of genuine opportunities to hear and question the 'leaders', but this was ridiculous.

So who won?

There was really no doubt in my mind, as this article for Tuesday's Canberra Times makes clear . . .

DEBATE, DEBATE, DEBATE!

There can be absolutely not doubt
about who won the leaders debate. Sky News’ David Speers spoke definitively and
emerged with his credibility intact. A succession of tightly framed questions
was spot on. Unfortunately, neither panellist matched either his precision or
insight. They debated the same old issues in the same old way. Waffle reigned
supreme.

Julia Gillard (does anyone remember
her?) once told journalists not to “write crap”. As an instruction this raises
difficulties. Are we meant to report what politicians say or not?

Take tax. Both sides promise not
to raise taxes, yet this hasn’t prevented either from promising a bounteous cornucopia
of future wonders. They promise to increase government services and yet still leave
more money in your pocket! How can this be? How can we not write rubbish when
it’s all the politicians’ offer?

Tony Abbott’s relying,
essentially, on the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. This is a lovely
story. Hundreds of people followed Jesus to hear him preach – how sadly different
this is from our attitude to politicians today! Jesus’ campaign managers (let’s
call them “apostles”) then faced a seemingly insolvable problem: how to feed
the multitude with just a few loaves and a couple of fishes. Yet this was the
miracle. No matter how often the food was divided, there was always more for
someone else.

Now don’t get me wrong. Tony
Abbott isn’t pretending to be Jesus – he hasn’t grown a beard and nor has he
(yet) adopted long, flowing gowns to cover his Speedo’s. But he’s relying on
exactly the same sort of economic miracle. The Coalition insists the less
companies are taxed, the more money will remain to float magically into your
pocket. Wealthy, productive people will spend. It will trickle down and
stimulate the economy and eventually, presumably, even into the pockets of
otherwise useless people like journalists. This is typical, old-style expansive
reasoning. Unfortunately the economy has changed.

The Coalition is doing exactly
the right thing by promising a general review of taxation but exactly the wrong
thing by promising to tax business less in the meantime. It’s ignoring the
original meaning of the scripture story. The miracle worked by diving up the
goodies amongst the masses; not by handing everything to one person and hoping
– fingers crossed – there’ll be enough crumbs left over to feed everyone else.

Take journalism, for example.
Newspapers aren’t struggling because they’re being taxed. Their problem resides
at a much deeper level, within the very business model itself. More money for Fairfax
won’t be used to employ more journalists. It’s the same as the car industry.
Propping it up with assistance will just distort the economy further. These are
fundamental problems. The way both parties are attempting to deal with these
issues is by papering over the deep fissures and suggesting everything is OK. This
will simply encourage the development of a myriad of personal service companies
as people seek to evade tax. Workers performing the same tasks will be
penalised simply because of the way their business model is structured. It’s a
win for the bureaucrats and accountants and a loose for the economy overall.

So does this mean Kevin Rudd’s
got it right? Hardly. During the debate he pointed to “record low interest
rates” and good unemployment statistics before pausing to frown slightly.
Perhaps his supposedly razor-sharp intellect was, finally, struggling to
reconcile how it could be that in such a dynamic economy, that his own
political fortunes could have reached such a nadir. Did people not realise that
the messiah was back? Ironically, it’s Rudd who has been far less reticent than
Abbott about wearing his Christianity on his sleeve; well, whenever it’s suited
his political purposes anyway. Perhaps its best not to ask Rudd about whether,
for example, it’s his moral duty to offer asylum for the persecuted any more.
But why don’t the masses still want him to divide the loaves and fishes?

The answer is simple. Inequality has
become ever more firmly entrenched under this government. Why should money
that’s been made from buying and selling investment properties be taxed at half
the rate of money that’s been earned by actually working? Why should those who
can afford to convert salary into superannuation receive benefits for investing
when they’d be doing it anyway? Labor’s economic reform record is atrocious. In
his first term in office Rudd made a shambles of implementing the fine recommendations
of Ken Henry’s tax review. There’s not even the glimmer of a prospect that he
would do any better next time round.

The polls suggest that many
people remember life with Rudd is akin to a bad marriage. Noble words. The ever-present
promise of reform. And then the battering begins again. Just ask Gillard. The
debate simply demonstrated the artificial political environment the politicians
are swimming in at the moment. The arguments swirl like a whirlpool,
disappearing into its own firmament and leaving nothing of substance. Both
sides proffer reach in to grasp at driftwood, only to discover they’re only plucking
tiny twigs of comfort from the churning water. Neither is genuinely prepared to
really level with the electorate.

The truth is the challenges the
next government is about to face are beyond imagining. Ageing, climate change
and a dearth of resources are all factors that are poised to inescapably alter
the comfortable economic assumptions of the past. We can only hope that the
politicians who spoke on Sunday night don’t really believe the rubbish they
were spouting to the electorate. They’re like parents reading bedtime
fairy-tales to the children. If either of them does have a real program for the
future, they’re certainly not about to divulge it to us. Nasty facts might get
in the way of a comfortable election victory. Neither leader wants to
over-share. Another bible story, anyone?

3 comments:

Nicholas....... what's this new found religious fervour ? As one old lady stated to me last Friday in the marginal seat of Greenway - "I don't want to vote for either of them... Tony Rabbit or Kevin Grubb'. Indeed.

I'm certainly not the suppository of 'all' knowledge, but I don't always talk out of my arse . . .

The Labor die-hards won't like my take on this election, neither will the Greens, but there's no point living in fantasy land. I think the signs are already there, they were there on day one. The government will change.

And that's why Charles, when we switch leaders we vote for change on the day. I don't dispute your claim, and I can't match it with my own evidence, but I don't think your old lady will vote informal. When she gets into the booth she may dislike both leaders, but will end up plumping for the rabbit, even if that's simply because she's alienated and wants a change.